


Glass

by Irhaboggle



Category: Wicked - All Media Types
Genre: Alone, Disability, Isolation, Loneliness, Musical, Musing, One Shot, Oz - Freeform, Politics, Rambling, Reflection, Sad, Tragedy, Wicked - Freeform, Wizard, Wizard of Oz, ablism, angsty, disabled, glass, kinda long, lonely, mirror, nessa - Freeform, prose, ranting, wheelchair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 10:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19868443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irhaboggle/pseuds/Irhaboggle
Summary: She was a glass doll in a glass castle with a glass face and a glass heart. This meant that she was beautiful, but also very breakable, and already, the first cracks were starting to appear in her smooth and shiny surface. She was about to shatter. But no one would see or care because the only friend she had was also made of glass. It was just her and that girl in the mirror.





	Glass

Nessa sat alone in her office, overlooking the rest of Munchkinland from her "throne". It really was just an upgraded version of her old wheelchair, meant to make her feel more elegant and powerful, but she took no joy in it today. Instead, it only seemed to serve as a hollow reminder of what she really was on the inside, and what she would always be: a broken, fragile girl who was weak and unable to fend for herself, even though she had spent so much of her life alone already.

The chair, that cursed chair, her ultimate cross to bear, was mocking her today. Even though it was now covered in satin, bedecked with gold and jewels, and fully automated, it brought her no joy, and she wanted nothing more than to set it on fire and watch it burn into ash. But she couldn't, she needed it. As much as she hated to say it, she still needed it. She still needed that cursed chair. It was a part of her, and she of it. It was her one and only companion, her truest and most long-lasting friend, even though it was also the one thing she hated most in the world. She could not get rid of it even though she wanted nothing more. She desired a companion above all other things, and that cursed chair was the one fulfill that wish. The irony was devastating and merciless. There was nothing she hated more than the chair.

Correction. There was actually _one_ thing she hated more than her wheelchair: the person forever bound to it. She hated herself more than anything else in all of Oz. Maybe she put on a front, pretending to be the prideful and ruthless, flawless leader of Munchkinland, but in truth, not a day went by that she did not loathe herself with every fiber of her own being. She looked like an ice queen, flawless and unflappable, but on the inside, she was melting and cracking a little bit more every single day.

"I hate this. I hate it. I hate it all. I hate my life. I hate my chair. I hate my disability. I hate myself. I hate who I am. I hate my personality. I hate my past. I hate my present. I have no future to look forward to. Father is gone. Sister is gone. My lover is gone. My hope and light and life are gone. Even my religion is starting to abandon me. My subjects do not love me. My kingdom is hollow and fake. I have nothing. I am alone. Again. Just like always. And I shall forever be this way. I hate it. I hate it all. I hate my life. I hate myself. I hate my chair. I hate being crippled. I hate being alone. I hate needing to be cared for. I hate being in charge. I hate it all. I hate, I hate, I hate..."

That was all that was left in the tragically beautiful Nessarose Thropp. Nothing but hatred. If anything had existed within her before, even the tiniest scraps of love, it was long gone now. To have spent her entire life simultaneously lorded over and totally alone was the ultimate curse, the ultimate paradox, and it had left her with nothing but festering hatred. But today was no different from all of those other days and the hate only continued to grow, no outlet to release itself into. She was stuck, with just that one emotion, forever and always. And Oz, did she hate it!

But well and truly, she hated how weak she was. She hated being crippled. Being wheelchair bound. Being disabled. Needing to survive off of scraps of pity that strangers might dole out to her. She was worth nothing on her own. She relied on any bit of aid she could get, and she could feel the disdain and sympathy it was eliciting, and she hated both of those reactions too. She hated being a broken, disabled girl in an ableist world. Next to nothing was wheelchair accessible, she was constantly looked down on (literally and figuratively) and she was always forgotten. She was her chair. The only time anyone ever brought her up was to talk about her disability, her chair. It was never to talk about her, Nessarose Thropp, just the disabled cripple in the chair. She was only her disability. In the eyes of Oz, even though they proclaimed to love the true girl that she was on the inside, she knew better. Whether she was hero or villain, martyr or monster, good witch or wicked, it did not matter. Somehow, it always boiled down to her chair, and that was all. Not her, Nessarose Thropp, her chair.

But even if ability politics was a hotter topic, even if Oz was more friendly to those with handicaps, that did not change one simple fact: that Nessa still relied on other people to survive. She was not self-sufficient, and that made her feel weak and disgusting like nothing else ever could. Even if Oz was legally forced to put ramps and elevators and wheelchair-sized walkways on every square inch of the country, that would not stop the simple fact that Nessa couldn't walk and relied both on chair and charity for aid. She hated it. She hated being a charity project. She hated only being someone's good deed so that they could elevate themselves instead of her. She was never looked after because she was loved, she was looked after because her caretakers were loved... by themselves. Their own egos goaded them into helping her out, to make them look like saints for helping the poor little disabled girl in the wheelchair. She hated it. The falseness, the lies, the vanity, the pretention, the egoism. Was it not a sin to act as if good deeds equaled salvation? Did God not favor those who acted humbly and sincerely, not those who prayed loudly on the street corners so that they might be seen by other men and worshipped then?

If that were so, why was Nessa always only ever a charity case? A product of someone else's good will for themselves, and not a human being in her own right. Even if Oz's identity and ability politics were more front and center and even if Oz did actually care about its handicapped citizens, Nessa knew she would never ever truly be human in the eyes of her people. And that was what she meant when she said that she was alone all the time, even though she was literally unable to live without someone always there to check up on her. She was a parasite and she knew it, and she hated it, always needing some sort of service dog to answer her every beck and call because she was too weak to do anything herself. But even though this forced her to be surrounded by people all the time, she was still so very alone. The social, mental and emotional isolation was what it was. Even in a room full of people, Nessa would always be alone. The only one in a wheelchair. The one everyone else stared at but tried to pretend that they weren't. The one everyone else gossiped about because her legs didn't work.

Even from birth it had been this way. Although Frex had been good, kind and loving to Nessa for all of her days, she secretly had never loved any of his love for her, because she knew that he was only ever overcompensating. Did Frex ever really truly love Nessa? Or did he love that part of his wife that was inside of her? And if he did love Nessa, and not his late wife, did he love her because he loved Her, or because he knew she literally could not survive without him? Nessa had always had a hunch that Frex doting upon her was not fatherly affection, but rather, overcompensation mixed with the guilt and shame of having another deformed, defunct child. If he coped with Elphaba by pretending she didn't exist, maybe he coped with her by overdoing it and acting as her eternal guard dog, never leaving her side. If he coped with Elphaba by pushing her aside, maybe he coped with Nessa by keeping her close. After all, as the Wheelchair Girl, she would never be able to survive on her own, so she would be forced to live with Frex forever. She was a child who could never run away from him.

Maybe that was why he had doted upon her so, because he knew that Elphaba could run away and leave him. She was fine. Maybe she had green skin, but she was still self-sufficient. She didn't need anyone to survive. Nessa did. As messed up as Elphaba was physically, she could survive on her own. Nessa couldn't. From birth, she was destined (or doomed, depending on how one looked at it) to forever be at Frex's side. Maybe that was why he doted upon her. Because he knew she could never leave. Or maybe he realized that she could never leave and was trying to force himself to love her so that their years and years spent together would not be quite so torturous for him. That was what scared her most of all, the idea that Frex might've hated her just as much as Elphaba (if not more because at least Elphaba could look after herself and one day leave) but only ever pretended to love her in order to convince himself that living a life with Nessa forever at his side wouldn't be so bad.

So that was it, that was Nessa's greatest fear: being a burden unto others. Who would ever want to be tied down with a literal ball-and-chain like her? Elphaba and Frex only cared for her out of obligation, she was sure of it! Elphaba made no attempt to hide how tired she was of caring for Nessa and, as previously stated, Frex could've easily been trying to hide something. Whether it was overcompensation because he was ashamed to have another daughter even more broken than the first or whether it was because he was trying to trick himself into loving Nessa did not matter. The point was, Nessa was certain her own family took no pleasure in taking care of a parasite like her.

And she was not pretty. Really pretty women had long luxurious legs that were silky, smooth, toned and bright. Hers were bony, atrophied because they had never been used even once. What man could ever love a girl with legs like that? What man could ever love a girl who could not walk or care for herself? What man would ever want a wife that would always need him to do everything for her? What man would want a wife who could not properly have sex because her entire bottom half was paralyzed? How could she ever hope to find someone who did care for her if no one would ever give her a chance because she was 50% dead, useless and broken? Who would ever truly love a cripple like her? Who would ever see her as something other than a charity case?

And that was where some of Nessa's envy came in. Although she knew all too well how mistreated Elphaba was by the world because of her green skin, there were nights when Nessa would just stay up and curse Elphaba. She would curse her older sister's wretched whining about her skin color. Oh boo hoo! Poor widdle Elphaba! All green with no friends! Ha! What Nessa wouldn't have done or given to trade places with Elphaba. The wrong colored skin being her only problem? That sounded like a dream to Nessa! Give Elphaba some normal skin and force her to take up the chair! By all means, Nessa didn't want it! Oh! But if only! If only! If only Nessa could've had a curse like Elphaba's, to only have the wrong skin color, and yet to still have a perfectly healthy and functional body. Nessa was, dare she say, green with envy about Elphaba's condition.

And Nessa wasn't insisting that being crippled was being worse than green-skinned just because she was being whiny. She had proof of her words. Just take a look at the two of them! Sure, Elphaba wasn't very pretty, but she had been able to do so much and go so far (literally and figuratively) and it was all because she had an able body. She was able to be strong and independent. She was able to escape her troubles. She was able to run from the people who hurt and hated her. Elphaba was free and Nessa was not, and yet Elphaba was somehow the patron saint of the misfits and outcasts and bully-victims. What a load of hooey! Nessa considered Elphaba very lucky to only be born with bad skin, and not bad legs. She took her able body for granted.

And the proof wasn't just in Elphaba's mobility, or her capability to literally run away from her problems while Nessa was always forced to stay behind and face them (or wait for someone else to rescue her). The proof was also in the fact that even though Elphaba was just as lonely as Nessa, it was all self-imposed. Nessa didn't choose to be unloved and she didn't choose to have no friends. It was the rest of the world that refused to see her as anything other than her disability. But Elphaba's isolation was self-imposed. No one kept her from going out and making friends. The proof came in the form of Glinda Upland. Boo hoo, poor, lonely, friendless Elphaba... Well at least she found someone eventually! But who did Nessa have? Still no one! And not only that, but at least Elphaba had been attractive enough to find a friend. What about Nessa? Well, no one could ever find a girl with legs as frail and pale as hers attractive, so was it any wonder she was left alone while Elphaba managed to find a friend?

While Nessa remained lonely, even when in a crowded room, Elphaba managed to snag herself a friend and lover in one fell swoop. While Nessa desperately begged for scraps of pity, not even daring to believe that true love existed for a broken thing like her, Elphaba had found Glinda. While Nessa was forced to be content with a boy whom she was sure didn't truly love her (Boq) Elphaba had found a woman who truly adored her. While Nessa only had half of Boq, Elphaba had all of Glinda. So how dare anyone say that Elphaba was the martyr?! Nessa had suffered far more pain than Elphaba ever had. Nessa never had a Glinda, and as long as that divide remained, as far as she was concerned, anyone who tried to say that Elphaba had had the harder life was an idiot.

And then Elphaba had gone and thrown it all away! She could've had a life slap in the lap of luxury, surrounded by people who genuinely loved her. But then she gave it all up! Chasing some stupid dream of hers, refusing to see the blessings she had, Elphaba left her entire life behind and ruined it all. Nessa had never been more disgusted with the selfish, blind, ungrateful green girl than when Glinda came home sobbing, saying that Elphaba had gone into hiding. Within Elphaba's grasp had been everything that Nessa could've ever wanted, including a true love (Glinda), and yet she'd thrown it all away in the blink of an eye. While Nessa scrounged for scraps of pity, Elphaba had had an abundance of it before throwing it all away. It was then that Nessa formally disowned Elphaba. The green girl was not her sister...

And in the days to come follow Elphaba's flight, the tiniest part of Nessa had sincerely hoped that Glinda would come to love her just as much as she had loved Elphaba. Selfish and pathetic as it was to say, Nessa had so desperately craved affection that she tried to leech some of it from Glinda, hoping that if Glinda could love one broken Thropp sister, maybe she could love the other. But it was not to be. It seemed that Nessa was so broken that even people who managed to put up with Elphaba could not spare anything else for Nessa...

Glinda drew inward and left everyone else behind, much the same as Elphaba had done. Glinda rarely spoke to her, never acknowledged her, and seemed to loathe spending time with her. For all of Nessa's best efforts, Glinda refused to let her in. So the love Glinda had for Elphaba died with Elphaba. None of it was left over for Nessa. That was just another thing Elphaba had taken from her and taken for granted: Glinda. And even though Nessa knew she would've treated Glinda right and not broken her heart, Glinda was already in too much pain to see Nessa as anything more than Little Elphaba. That was what Nessa hated most of all. It wasn't just watching Glinda slip out of the friend group, it wasn't just realizing that Glinda's love for Elphaba would never turn into love for her, it was realizing that Glinda did not see Nessarose Thropp. Only Elphaba.

When they all graduated, then, Nessa was quick to claim her rights to the throne in Munchkinland. This was for several reasons. One, she needed a distraction from her miserable life. Two, she wanted to finally feel like she meant something in this world and that she actually mattered and could make a difference. Three, she needed an excuse to keep Boq with her, to nab him as quick as possible before he left her just the way everyone else had. Even Frex had abandoned her, the shame of Elphaba's flight overpowering his love for Nessa. Instead of finding the strength to live on for Nessa's sake, Frex died. The shame of Elphaba's deeds killed him. And so, once again, Elphaba took something else from Nessa's life. Boq was all she had now. And she could already sense him slipping away, if he had ever truly been hers to begin with.

But she was so desperate to keep at least one friend in her life that she all but enslaved him within their little mansion. He never left. She kept him close, always. He was all she had left, so he was going to be all she focused her attention on. He would never ever leave her, because if he did, Nessa was sure it would kill her. Not because she needed any help (though she did), but because she was sure the grief and anger of losing another loved one might finally do her in, just as it had done Frex in. Maybe Frex had favored Elphaba all along. Maybe that was why he had died when only Nessa remained. That thought burned Nessa to her very core and haunted her up until her own dying day.

So with the ever-growing fear that even Frex's love had been a lie, Nessa deluded herself into believing that Boq's affections for her were true. She continually told herself that the only reason he wasn't more... explicit with his love for her was because of that cursed stigma that surrounded handicapped people. Of course Boq loved her! It was just that, as a wheelchair-bound girl, he still felt awkward and shy around her, and didn't quite know how to express his feelings. And of course, the pressure and stigma from the outside world must've been driving him crazy! That had to be it, right? Surely it had to be! What else could it have possibly been? Because by this point in time, the idea that Boq might've hated Nessa was an idea that was literally unfathomable to her. That simply could not be.

So she lied to everyone, including herself, keeping Boq eternally close for "his own protection". But in reality, it was all only ever for her own. She was so terrified of being left alone again... She wanted at least some semblance of a normal life. How could she do that without a husband? A family? So Boq had to stay with her! So she could have at least a tiny slice of a normal life! A wife and husband with kids. A house. That would be what she would have! Sure, she would be in a wheelchair, but she would have a husband! She would be a good woman and wife! She would not be a total failure! She would have been pretty enough to secure a prince charming and a soulmate! Even she would not be so pathetic as to die alone, unloved and unwanted. If Elphaba had managed to find a soulmate (even though she had given up her chance to be with that soulmate) then so could Nessa! If Elphaba could find a prince(ss) charming, so could Nessa! And that was Boq!

But at the end of the day, in her heart of hearts, Nessa knew it was all only a lie. Smoke and mirrors, created by her own mind and ego. She wasn't really beloved. She was hated. And hating. Alone. Surrounded by so many people, and yet still so dismally alone. No friends or family or support, just unwilling and begrudging puppets whom she was trying to groom into being the perfect family for her. But it was all only fake. Father had abandoned her. Elphaba wasn't coming back. Glinda wasn't coming back. Boq had never even been hers to start with and he was slipping away more and more every day. It was just her and the mirror. Her and her eternal curse: the wheelchair.

So Nessa continued to sit alone in silence, utterly unloved and unwanted by all, including herself. She stared out the glass windows that her kingdom. It was all like a glass castle in her eyes now. It was beautiful, brightly spun and beautifully crafted, but dismally hollow, cheap and fragile. Like blown glass, her kingdom shined in many colors, but it wouldn't take more than the tiniest of blows to bring it all crashing and cracking down. It was a façade and she knew it. But she continued to look out her glass window at her glass kingdom, feeling very much like a glass queen with a glass throne and crown. They were all so beautiful and solid, yet so very breakable and weak. They were already cracking and fading away, Nessa could feel it. Her smoke and glass mirrors were coming undone...

The shoes on her feet were also made of glass, something that only the most talented Quadling glassblowers were capable of making. They had been a gift from Frex, as a symbol of his love for her, and her own "natural beauty". How fitting it was, then, that they should be made of glass. Transparent, useless, weak, cheap. They changed at the whim of whatever was inside of them. And they had been shoes, gifts for her feet, feet that didn't work. So she could wear glass shoes because she would never actually walk in them. There was another painfully fitting irony. The girl with broken feet wore very breakable shoes that existed only to beautify that which had been rendered ugly by its own deformation. No matter how many sparkly things she or Frex put on her feet, that didn't stop the plain and simple fact that they didn't work. The shoes were smoke and mirrors meant to conceal her ugliness, and just like the throne, they were meant to try and make her feel better about her disability. But the shoes were just as effective as the chair, which was to say, they only served as a cruel reminder of who Nessa was, and who she was always cursed to be: alone.

It would be her forever. Alone. No Boq. No family. No friends. Just her. And the glass. The glass window, forever separating her from the world outside. The glass kingdom, so false and fragile. The glass shoes, a cruel reminder that her feet were just as useful to her as glass shoes would've been to someone normal. Glass legs, just as frail, pale and breakable because they had never ever been used. A glass face, smooth and beautiful, but seconds away from cracking. A glass heart, which had already broken into razor sharp shards many times over.

The only form of genuine company, of another human being, appeared to her in her glass mirror. That was the only one who stood by her now, that girl in the mirror. She was the only one to never ever leave Nessa's side. It was almost like she was trying to be the companion Nessa so desperately craved, but just like with her wheelchair, the sentiment was not appreciated. The one companion she loathed most of all in the world was the only one who ever stayed by her side, and it refused to let her go. She was just a glass doll sitting in a glass castle surrounded by glass treasures with a glass soul, and she was about to break...

But no one would notice or care, because the only friend she had was made of glass as well, that girl in the mirror. That girl whom she hated more than anything else in all of Oz. That girl who was the Wicked Witch of the East. And they deserved each other... She was the only one whom Nessa deserved, and the only one who deserved Nessa. The glass was starting to break again...

 _Don't leave me 'til my sorry life has ceased..._  
Alone and loveless here...  
Just the girl in the mirror...  
Just her and me...

_The Wicked Witch of the East!_

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Sorry this was so long, angsty, rambling, plotless and disorganized, but it's just meant to be some Nessa musings because I honestly think her musical counterpart is really underrated. In hindsight, she's got a lot of potential, and we could use some more Nessa in the world. Also, forgive any offensive terms within this fic. That was just supposed to be reflective of how Nessa saw herself.


End file.
